Filthy Radiance
by a romantic egoist
Summary: This is how we self-destruct. // Cloud, Tifa, Reno


**note:** originally written in 2005 at _tragicparty [at] lj_. you can take a look at the original version if you care to, but there are no big differences ... just more embellishments and still ridiculous. i just need this posted here for a collection of sorts. song by _elliott smith_. AU-ish because cloud is no pushover (rather psychotic) here (_read:_ uncharacteristic) and, well, this was the purest of pure (ha, irony) experimentations. rated a hard M, loves. careful.

* * *

**filthy radiance**  
_a romantic egoist_

• •

**i.** _**drink up, baby, stay up all night**_

smoke lingers and swirls in a dark haze, blue almost. almost. in the backdrop of the waning moon and dying, thorny stars. shotgun, luminous eyes are stark and shallow, focused on the complex tangles of arms and legs – pale and beautiful, like a collision of ocean waves and waves and smeared with a tragic tragedy, highlighted by battle scars and wounds sound vermillion. they sync in such precision that their parallel movements –

_(segments and lines and consistency)_

– look pre-planned, embedded into their blood like the mechanisms of robots.

he drinks heavily from a bottle of scotch or whiskey or vodka, blood pumping and swimming rapidly in his veins like heroin, thirsting for life, for warmth; it's an internal, graceful kind of static electricity and he's burning –

_(burning hot and wild blazing heat of fury)_

– and he groans, watching them.

she clings to the blond above her, knees bent and cradling his hips, rocking with a flow pattern, a poetically-infused gesture, and she's bucking wildly beneath him, muffling her sounds with teeth grazes and lips and _hushhushhush_. her eyes are dark and blood red in the dim lighting of the room, and she's looking at him like she's desperate and searching –

_(but aren't they all?)  
_

**ii.** _** do what i say and i'll make you okay**_

her beauty is incandescent as she sleeps ever quiet, not a sound not a movement nothing. she's blinding, and they think that if they look at her too long, too hard, their eyes will burn suns beneath their eyelids, bleed and melt into hollow darkness like they were blind since birth.

she sleeps,

_and they look at each other in raging fires, _blue and green bluegreen_ sparks,  
and before they know it, they're at each other's throats, lips chapped,  
and they're breaking geometric theorems and postulates,  
and they struggle against each other,_

fucking and fucking and fucking –

– and she sleeps on beneath that crescent silver fluorescence.

**iii. **_**i'll kiss you again between the bars**_

they spiral down in a limb heap of red and brown clashing, gold aside and fading bright. he strokes himself, groans, while they – _they_ – fuse at the hips and never let go and he's astounded stunned breathless by the sheer intimacy and radiant flare of congress.

they're thin and twisting like wiry limbs, and he finds that his heart is too loud in his ears and if he could just wrench the redhead away –

no. _no_.

jealousy is unbecoming, but he lives it somewhere.

they'll share.

_he_ will share for now, for now, for now and now.

_and then he can't think straight because they're kissing him, lips everywhere –_

– it's hypnotic and beautiful.

**iv.** _**separate from the rest where i like you the best**_

a wolf, covetous, angry and fierce.

no. no, _no_, he doesn't ever like sharing.

_and this is how he does it:_

he fucks her, leaves her with marks that will stay with her, until she can't stop moaning and crying for himhim_him_,  
until the boy with the hair of fireblood falls asleep,  
until he's sated and and and,  
gone,

_and this is how it's done:_

he carries her away, kisses her as she collapses in his arms,  
drags the other man's body in the tub in the bathroom, cracked and dirty,  
and he leaves him alone in this decaying room, stealing her away,

_and this is how it finishes:_

he sets the room on fire.

**v.** _**i'll keep them still**_

eyes that are bright and intense with blues and greens open beneath the water's surface –

– he breathes.


End file.
